Today, different tillage implements, such as turning plows, chisels, disc plows, cultivators or subsoiling farm implements are used to till the land. These implements are attached behind a tractor that draws them, supplying the necessary power to lift and break up the soil, and perform other operations on the land.
These working means present several problems, the main one being that operations cannot be automated because the tractor must be driven and handled by a person. Moreover, the need to use a tractor increases investment costs, and tractor maintenance, including the necessary fuel consumption, is considerable.
Currently, these diesel-engine tractors do not represent an ideal solution from an ecological and environmental point of view, as they release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, use fossil fuel with limited resources, and their handling requires the ongoing attention of a driver or operator, which increases the final cost of the cultivated products.
Tractors achieve their adherence from the interaction of the tire with the land and as a result of the tractor's weight; this technique requires the use of water-filled tires, counterweights and heavy tractors. This has a compaction effect on farmlands with the consequent loss of fertility. Having to move the tractor's tonnage, which requires an energy consumption that is lost with the tire grip and which is not useful in moving the land, is an inefficiency.
An ideal solution to at least partially solve the problems of current tractors would be the development of tractors operated by solar energy or directly with electricity; however, developments made in these types of solar or electric power are not applicable to existing tractors, which are of large dimensions, weight and power, since it would be necessary to use a disproportionate number of photovoltaic panels to recharge the batteries and, in the case of electrical power, in addition to having a very restricted range, recharging the vehicle's battery would require the installation of power points in crop fields, which is impractical due to both the cost of the installation and the huge amount of time required to recharge the batteries.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,199,000 document describes a self-propelled tractor comprising a telematics central unit comprising a global positioning system (GPS), sensors for the reception of a number of input parameters, a camera for capturing images of the surroundings and a control unit associated to the GPS and to the input sensors which, based on the information provided by both, determines the farm work to be performed and exchanges this information with a data storage unit. Since this tractor has supporting wheels, it causes a compaction of the soil during its movement and the consequent loss of fertility; and fails to satisfactorily resolve the abovementioned problems regarding the consumption of energy used on just the displacement of the tractor.
Different implements intended to be attached to a tow tractor by different means are also known. For example, document GB 1174622 describes an attachment system for implements employed on a tractor to the structure thereof and highlights the importance that these tools can describe not only a vertical movement but also a lateral movement. This implement requires coupling to a tractor, so it does not resolve either the problems mentioned above concerning soil compaction caused by the tractor wheels, and the inevitable consumption of energy targeted exclusively at engine movement.